Summary

Scientists have been studying the social intelligence of dogs—how they evolved to communicate and bond with us—for more than 2 decades, but they've largely ignored cats. That has started to change. In the past 5 years, a number of laboratories exploring feline social cognition have popped up around the globe, revealing that cats rival dogs in many tests of social smarts. But cats are hard to work with—they freak out in the laboratory and often don't cooperate even when researchers study them in their homes—causing some to wonder whether studies of the feline mind will take off the same way they have for dogs.